haiku

from

ILLUSIONS
IN THREE PARTS

by

Okami
Journal of a Twelvemonth, 1998

The Northern Lights:
the old dog shakes himself.

A damson falling
brings leaves and wasps
down to earth.

 After the Sauna
night-breeze on our nipples.
The Northern Lights.

 Friendless and magnificent
above McDonald’s:
the Harvest Moon.

 
Pond beneath a moonless sky:
Start and finish of everything.

 
Its last blood-red leaves gone
how stiff the creeper
on the graveyard wall.

 
Hoar-frost on the hair
upon the hot chests of the
magic-mushroom gatherers.

 
In my autumn groin
mist and rain and river
are indistinguishable.

Dead tree slanting athwart the stream:
Ivy-stems entwine my life.

 
After the storm, apples pass
from wasps to slugs to me.

 
Another robin in my mousetrap:
few of us fail to give humanity
a bad name.

 
Wagtail on the roof:
the wise man combs his beard
with a fork.

Seeming to do little
the fossil has survived
a hundred million years.

Full winter moon – is it
a coalescing of coldness ?

 
December foghorn:
yet another beckoning
from beyond the grave.

 
The weather forecast.
Millennia of wind and rain
- and now people shave.

Snail-trails in frost:
‘A painter should study
the stains on walls.’ *

 
The crotch of a winter birch
love, like the Unicorn
is conceived here.

The skin of the wino
is a beautiful silk palace for lice.

Locked ward
and sunless winter day:
Home is where the mind is.

 
Neat path. Neat lawn.
Neat visitors.
Neat concentration-camp.

 
The moon in a veil
as if it had coldly evolved an ego.

Frost Kings were crowned
again last night: my garden
is bedecked with lace.

 
Digging: a fine red worm.
Wisdom: to see everything
as from the grave.

Thinking about my death
I enthusastically clean out
the septic tank.  

Dogshit on pavements:
the unconscious calligraphy
of prisoners.

Rotting leaves
lie on each other lovingly
in hecatombs.

 
Morning. My erection
does not belie regret
at my father’s.

The day in silence.
At night the telephone rings.
It’s a wrong number.

 
Winter solitude: gorse-bush
flowering in a muddy field.

Red sky at morning:
the blood of global greed
has reached the very clouds.

 
Between life and death
I am always hoping to climb
Out of myself.

Winter sunlight:
trying to pull my shadow
out of the shade.

Water on the knee…
Water on the brain…and now
Water on the moon!

 
With my dog: a cold wet day
is an oceanic experience.

 
Our lives intertwined,
Oscar and I check up on
each other’s fæces.

 
Community of luxury:
I drink the wine
while Oscar chews the cork.

 
Quiet rain. Dogs express
so much silently – why must we
make so much noise ?

 
Every night, before
we go to bed – a brief
strip-show for my dog.

 
Ice on a puddle:
the brittle transience of wisdom.

 
Richly-ploughed field:
its beauty makes me weep
for the flaying of the earth. 

April in Ireland.
A field of mud. A black calf
licks a beige bull’s balls.

 
Zen of orgasm:
the not-having is sexier
than the having

.


‘Soul’ is integrity.
Thus few humans – but all
animals – have souls.

 
A haiku: so what ?
So many haiku –
So what ?

 
Headless chicken –
creatures just as maimed
are masters of the world.

 
Fighting for comfort
in front of a screen:
The American Dream.

 
Security camera
shows me my Other
going the other way.

 
Bluebottle in confessional –
not proclaiming its sins
but dying to escape.

 
A puddle:
It took me fifty years to realise
how shallow people are.

 
Moon –those who walked over you
are half in darkness
half in blinding light.

 
Full moon naked
above the naked tree
O for a naked mind!

 
The silence between wars:
The science that is false.

 
Visiting the psychiatrist:
like intimacy with a fridge.

 
Milky Way.
Stretching to infinity
the spaces between people.

 
Hunchback woman
with long wattle wistfully
appraises my long beard.

 


Our comfort: measure
of our disrespect for many creatures,
many things.

Amphisbæna:
making love is not an act
- but an animal.

"Aggressive Begging" -
a hundred times more honest than
aggressive wealth.

 
In my summer garden
my only feeling:
how much longer.

 
Check-out. Capitalism:
the religion to end
all religions.

 
Miru tokoro . Places to see.
Kita michi wa The road I came
Hakkiri chigairu . Is clearly different.

 
The joy of breakfast.
The best Java coffee-beans
pass through a cat.

 
Cobwebs in fog.
I can’t tell my end from my beginning.

 
Dying: no longer
missing the boat in the dark
night of the soul.
 
 
 
 
Non-haiku postscript:
The Internet:
the greatest triumph
of form over content ?

The snow falling
tells me to stop thinking...